


Alloy

by mechadogmarron



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! GX
Genre: Other, cargo ship, not a joke fic, objectum sexuality, pre-Dark World
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-19
Updated: 2018-04-19
Packaged: 2019-04-24 20:04:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,077
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14362641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mechadogmarron/pseuds/mechadogmarron
Summary: O'Brien doesn't have a lot of people he can trust.Thankfully, he can at least rely on his deck.





	Alloy

If you’d told O’Brien about card spirits in those days, back before the Dark World, back before Yubel, he wouldn’t’ve put any stock into it. He didn’t worry himself too much about that kind of shit; the supernatural side of dueling didn’t interest him at all. Duel Alchemy was for the weak kids, the ones who didn’t have the kind of talent to win on their own backs. He didn’t need luck or magic. He had a head for strategy, a will to win no matter the cost, and a deck of cards. Whether there was some Volcanic Scattershot living in another dimension, corresponding exactly to the piece of cardboard he kept at his side at all times, was irrelevant.

But that didn’t mean he didn’t love his cards. They were his soldiers, but more than that, they were his friends, his confidants, the only things he had. His parents were dead, and his harsh demeanor and unwillingness to bother with the poorly-written heel-face trash talk and dramatized, carefully marketed persona building that characterized professional dueling had made him few human friends. Even his teachers didn’t quite know what to do with him, a battle-hardened in-it-to-win-it duelist who didn’t care if the game didn’t go on long enough to make the match worth it to the sponsors. He might’ve attracted Cobra’s attention, but he wasn’t stupid enough to think the man wanted anything other than to exploit him for everything he was worth and toss him aside when he was done. All he could do was use him right back, a source of resources he badly needed. It was take and take, and that was worth something.

But Doomfire would never take from him. Doomfire would never exploit him. He knew Doomfire was just a playing card, but that didn’t make it any less important to him. When all his gear was clean and polished, all his duels done, when he’d made sure he was prepped for Ancient Duel History tests and had bullshitted his way through another pointless Duel Alchemy essay, he would sit at the desk in the dorm room, staring at his cards. It wasn’t like he could hear them talking, but that didn’t keep him from telling them everything that came to mind, talking about his parents and his childhood and his opinions on his classmates, explaining the theses in his essays.

Sometimes he’d just look at him, admiring those complex alloys and modern polymers that allowed for such sturdy cards to be built, a thousand times more advanced than the pieces of cardboard that cards had once been made of, before KaibaCorp’s involvement. His corners were cut perfectly, gently rounded; his art was printed in vivid color, his form carefully and lovingly rendered by some talented artist. It made him wish Industrial Illusions credited its creative team more directly. He would’ve loved to see their other work. The lettering on his name was precise, carefully gilded; the text on his card fit perfectly in the frame, not overcrowded like some of his more recently-printed peers. His effect was powerful but elegant, not relying on over-the-top defensive abilities or overcomplicated, fragile combo potential; it backed up his impressive 3000 attack points. Strong enough to tie even the legendary Blue-Eyes White Dragon. What wasn’t to love?

No, there wasn’t a single thing wrong with his Doomfire. Even the border around his art was perfect. And though Doomfire didn’t speak to him, not in English, not in some magical, supernatural way, he still got a feeling from him. A connection. The two of them were alike, both warriors, both mercs. O’Brien was a warrior, and Doomfire was his weapon — a bond of trust far deeper than anything he’d ever felt with another human. People would betray him, people would fail him, people wouldn’t understand what made him tick. He didn’t have any interest in them, not in friends and not in romance. All he needed was his deck. Doomfire would never fail him. Even when he got removed — when someone was packing a Raigeki Break or a Dark Hole or running something who could beat even his most powerful cards in direct combat — it wasn’t Doomfire’s fault, just a fault in O’Brien’s strategy. Dueling was war, and sometimes people didn’t make it.

Even without words, he could tell how Doomfire felt about things, at some level — not in the sense of a Duel Spirit, but in the sense of a literal card spirit, not some extradimensional entity but a spark of life in that mix of metal, plastic, and cardboard anyways. Doomfire wanted to duel, Doomfire wanted to win, Doomfire liked fighting, Doomfire didn’t mind losing the battle if it helped O’Brien win the war. Even outside of dueling, he felt something through that connection. The color of his card sleeves: red was the obvious choice, but Doomfire liked the petrol ones best. What to have for dinner: if it was up to him, O’Brien would’ve lived off meal powder dumped in coffee instead of water, but he knew Doomfire didn’t like that, knew his cards fought hard for him and he had to stay healthy for their sakes. Every now and then he’d even get the sense Doomfire liked a song he was listening to, or thought a passage in his textbook was particularly interesting (or boring — he didn’t care for Aqua monsters at all, nor Water attributes in general.) It was like the two of them were on the same level.

He didn’t know quite how to talk about it, didn’t know what it meant. He really cared about Doomfire, even _loved_ Doomfire, in a way he’d never loved a fellow human. But he didn’t need to know how to talk about it. He didn’t need an explanation. He didn’t need to tell his mom or dad — they wouldn’t get it and they didn’t need to know. He hardly needed to explain it to Viper.

Doomfire was important to him, plain and simple. The only one he could rely on. The only one he could fight beside. And even with nothing for personal bonding but some time at a desk together, even if their bond was at its strongest in a duel, not a date, he knew Doomfire cared about him as much as a trading card could ever care about a human being. It didn’t take English (or Japanese, for that matter) to communicate that.

He loved Doomfire, and that was that.

**Author's Note:**

> I've cornered the market on Doomfire/Austin! I used the English card names because I played the game in English, but the Japanese character names because I watched the show subbed. :) Also, to be clear, this fanfiction is not a joke fic and is in fact completely unironic.
> 
> If you're curious about objectum sexuality, please check out the OS Positive About OS page at https://os-positive.tumblr.com/about :)


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